


The Place Where You Lived

by Happy_Cow



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Historical, Doctor Kylo Ren, F/M, Maids, Medical Professionals, Older Man/Younger Woman, Power Imbalance, Slice of Life, dubcon, maid rey
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:14:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24760642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Happy_Cow/pseuds/Happy_Cow
Summary: House Skywalker falls on financial troubles. Kylo Ren is indifferent to the loss of the hired help, but... the girl can stay, if she so wishes.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 37
Kudos: 172





	1. Hopefully this stays short

**Author's Note:**

> henlo  
> So after Icey, I wondered what other things AO3 likes. Are any of you partial to maid outfits?? bunny suits even???   
> I'm curious now like what are the demographics
> 
> BTW insp comes from episodes of Doc Martin, The Youngest Science, and My Recently Hired Maid is Suspicious!  
> Except Benjamin Solo is not a shota

It began when the courts had determined that there was no statute of limitations for what his grandfather had done. Anakin was long dead, as were his victims, but his estate still existed. They took nearly everything that belonged to the man so unfortunate to bare the Skywalker name.

Thus, ‘Kylo Ren’ was born.

Kylo Ren had a legitimate education from a medical university. He was in the process of beginning his own practice. He had no living relatives; his parents had died in an automobile accident. Although he was handsome in his way, he kept a polite reserve that separated him from his patients, and so remained a bachelor. He could be reliably summoned by phone at any hour, and maintained a professional bedside manner at all times.

He was a damn good doctor.

There was every benefit to being Kylo Ren. One was a clean slate: a means to create a living for himself, without appending it to someone else’s tragic history. This would be something solely for _himself_ , something created by his own hands alone. There was only one obstacle.

Benjamin Skywalker would have to die.

The change was easy enough for him to make. He had been gone to university for so long and had lived such a sheltered life, that no one in the towns and villas he visited recognized his face. ‘Benjamin’ was a common name, common enough for him to ignore. ‘Kylo’ was unique enough for him to train himself to respond to it. He only had to look at himself in the mirror, and know that that man staring back at him was Kylo Ren.

But the change was not so easy for the house girl.

Short, puckish little _thing_. Brown hair which she wore in two or three messy buns. She grasped that Kylo wished to change his name, but at first did not remember this. He had explained the reason for the change in identity, but he quickly learned that the girl was a simple creature. ‘I like your name,’ she had said mournfully. For the rest of the day he was Kylo Ren, except for the sweetly shrill cry of Benjamin! at mealtimes or when she needed his attention.

No more.

At first, he tried the gentle measures. Each time she used the old name, he would correct her. It did not work. He found he hated saying his own name several times a day, as though he were introducing himself to a stranger in his own house. And it never sunk into her thick skull. ‘Kylo Ren’ began to be the noise he made whenever the girl addressed him:

‘Good morning Ben, I fixed the coffee percolator.’

‘Kylo Ren. Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’

So he decided to stop responding to the old name. One night when she began calling him for dinner, he stopped himself from replying and kept quiet.

‘Benjamin! Dinner is ready.’ Then, ‘Ben? _Dinner_?’

It felt like a strange game of hide and seek. In the library, Kylo could hear her moving about the house. All she needed to do was use his new name. He continued to read the medical journal in his hands, all the while listening to her cry for Benjamin.

Instead after ten minutes of searching, she pushed open the door to the library and squawked in triumph. ‘ _I found you_!’ she cried, red in the face.

This game did not even last until the next day. He was outside getting fresh air when Rey called him back inside, because Poe Dameron broke his leg. In a medical emergency, it didn’t matter what she called him.

No more. He could’ve resigned to having two different names: Kylo Ren outside, and old Benjamin to his birth certificate, his degree, and in his house. But he did not want to hear his old name anymore. Benjamin Skywalker was nearly dead to him, the transformation next to complete; but every time she said his name, she threatened to resurrect him. No more. It was time to let the past die — to _kill it if he had to_.

x

On Sunday morning, Kylo Ren woke before the sun. He dressed himself in a white button down shirt and grey slacks. He had received this next plan in a dream, as if handed down from Providence, and he knew he needed to act quickly and assertively if this plan were to work. Kylo Ren worked best on impulse; Benjamin was the slow and thinking animal bogged down by doubts and fears, but not Kylo.

Kylo Ren was not an accomplished cook, but he knew how to crack an egg into a pan and place toast into a toaster. The smell of heat cooking things eventually roused the girl from her sleep. He saw her shyly enter the kitchen. Despite spending most of her life under this house, fastidiousness was not her strong suit. Stray hair fell lose from the two buns behind her ears, and one of the sleeves of her uniform fell below her shoulder. She also needed to smooth out her stockings on her left side.

“Good morning, Rey,” he said.

She looked at him, bleary-eyed, rosebud lips set in a confused o. A decade ago, all the maids and butlers were allowed Sunday morning to go to the church in the village over for Mass, but he and the girl were not so observant. In these modern days, he let her sleep in past sunrise. He remembered using Sunday mornings to learn how to cook eggs for himself and Mother. He also cooked for himself while at University. Also he recalled never having done so for the girl, and felt a strange pang of guilt. He shook it away.

“It’s time that you and I had a talk.” Kylo turned from the stove to look at her, and gauge her reaction. A flash of pale fear crossed her features. “Sit down,” he ordered.

The girl hesitated before obediently sitting down on one of the wooden stools by the kitchen countertop. He had meant for her to sit in the dining room, but Kylo Ren was also flexible. He set two plates down for each of them and distributed eggs and a slice of toast for each of them. Despite having not cooked in a year, he was very proud of his breakfast. He sat next to the girl and watched her eat.

Rey came unburdened with a last name. There were rumors about her past, but they were bleak — that her mother bore her out of wedlock and handed her off to an uncle forced her to work all before the age of seven. She was small and wiry, willful and without good manners sometimes, but Kylo Ren found her more tolerable than other girls her age. She didn’t care for gossip or boyfriends, and she had a level head on her. The thing the girl needed was discipline, to turn her into a woman.

That was his feeling: paternalism.

“Rey,” he said.

The girl turned her head and looked up at him. This close, he realized, her eyes were green and flecked with shades of grey. She licked some egg off her lower lip.

“Do you enjoy my cooking?” His voice had thickened in his throat. He wished he had some coffee on hand. The girl nodded. “That’s good.” He smiled. “I don’t think I’ve... cooked for anyone, in a long time.”

“Am I in trouble?” she asked, suddenly.

Kylo recoiled. “No,” he said. To emphasize his well-meaning, he placed a hand on her thin shoulder, and pulled up the sleeve. His fingers grazed her collar bone; he felt a slight tremble beneath her warm skin. “No.” He removed his hand and took a steadying breath.

“Rey,” he said, “I want to talk to you about my name.”

“Oh.”

“Do you understand,” he said, “that from now on, my name is Kylo Ren?” She nodded, wide-eyed. “Could I hear you say it? My name.” He cocked his head, as he does while giving children their immunization vaccines. “Kylo. Ren.”

“Kylo, Ren,” she parroted.

“So you can say it,” Kylo said, smiling. “Good. I wondered if it was too foreign for you.”

“But I like Benjamin better,” she muttered, her eyes flickering down.

“Your opinion does not matter,” he said, and he reached down to grasp her wrists in his hands. Her pulse thrummed beneath his fingertips. “Rey, you need to call me Kylo Ren.”

She nodded, her eyes trained on the floor. Her eyelashes were a light hazel.

“Benjamin is dead,” he said sternly, his voice still thick. “He is dead and in the past. There is only Kylo Ren, now. Will you please refer to me as such, from now and in perpetuity?”

She nodded and he squeezed her narrow wrists together. His pants felt tight suddenly. He became aware of a faded floral scent in her hair and wondered if that was what her bed smelled like. “Yes, Sir,” she said meekly.

He tugged lightly on her wrists and she raised her green eyes. She said, “I will try.”

“There is no try,” he said flatly. “Either you will, or you will find yourself without a home.” The horror on her face nearly broke his will, but a small part of him enjoyed it. Guiltily.

“Please,” she said. He released her and she pressed her hands together. “I-I won’t, call you B... his name, again,” she said. Her eyes shone with unshed tears, her chin trembled. “I promise.”

Kylo frowned dubiously, but inside he was elated. “What good is your word? You’ve given it before and it meant nothing.”

“I will... I will _try_ —.”

“There is no trying.” Such an emotional creature, Rey was. At the threat of losing her home, she had come to the verge of dissolving in tears. In other females, this was a source of annoyance to Kylo. Bored, rich heiresses lounging on chaises, in the throes of a deep depression with no fathomable source: these were the kinds that mother had tried to pair him up with before the money ran out. _Misery par misery_.

In sweet, petulant Rey it was a source of wonder.

He opened his arms, and as in his dream he wrapped them around her small frame. The girl froze, and then sank into his embrace.

“Don’t you worry,” he chided, mouth in her hair. She had not yet presented; he would give it a year or two for her to blossom. Beta, of course. He moved his hand in reassuring circles over the small of her back. “Don’t you worry. We‘ll train it out of you yet, little one.”

She snuffled wetly and shook in his arms, before nodding.

“We‘ll kill Benjamin, together,” he said. “We‘ll _beat_ him out of you, so that you can live in this house with me.” Lightly he pushed the girl away, but kept his hand on her scalp. She came to rest her forehead against his, so they were eye to eye as in his dream. In a low voice, he explained his plan.

This was the plan. Every time she spoke the old name, he would count these up, and at the end of the day he would deliver a number of blows to her to equal double the number of times the name was spoken.

To demonstrate, he slipped his hand beneath the flair of her skirt and lightly pat her small, soft bottom. He didn’t really want to beat the girl; she wasn’t an animal. Although she could perturb him sometimes, she was a good girl and he imagined himself to be a gentleman. The good girl made a small sound, but she nodded.

She understood this very good plan, if it were to help her keep her bed and her biweekly allowance.


	2. I should be going, but thanks for reading me

As a country doctor with no office and a blurry past, Kylo Ren drove to a variety of places and met a smorgasbord of patients. He was reminded every day that he did not like many people.

The farming laborers called him Doc Ren or something in Spanish, and they could not be expected to follow simple instructions. Each household had at least three screaming children running around. He pitied the babies that he delivered there, squirming and blind and helpless to the consequences that brought them into those wretched and overcrowded hovels. More noise in a full and sagging household.

Here, there was no rush to pay the doctor. Someone would badger the poor girl over the phone in an effort to get her to accept payment in installments, or alternative payments altogether. For this reason, Rey had a small henhouse where she kept a few chickens, and a pet goat that would scream whenever Kylo accidentally made eye contact with it. Sometimes Kylo needed to stretch around his funds to pay for his tools and provide the girl her biweekly allowance; unlike his patients, he was taught not to put himself into debt.

The handful of wealthier landowners were insufferable to Kylo. Their grand houses and long names reminded him of what he used to have and what he used to be, and he hated it all. There was only one who was tolerable enough, and that was the retired Dr. Snoke: a lifelong bachelor who lived alone all by himself. Talk with him was good — Snoke had been a field medic in the last war, and they discussed interesting surgery, advances new and old. Kylo Ren did not mind these long and regular visits, to check if his friend’s heart took to the new medication.

One day, Dr. Snoke turned to him and he heaved a sigh. He sat in his wheelchair, not bothering to change out of his gold bathrobe for the day. “Thank you for keeping an old man company. It’s rare to have conversation as good as this these days.” They sat in his grand parlor, but it was virtually naked of any floral tapestries or embroidery, any feminizing decor. Just hardwood furniture, and earth-toned chairs.

Kylo shrugged his shoulders, and picked up his bag. “No trouble at all.” He sensed the old man was perhaps lonely, that the frequent calls about heart troubles was a way of reaching out.

He was about to go, when the old man asked, “Perhaps you’ve told me before, but I would like to make sure: are you married, Kylo Ren?”

Kylo shook his head, smiling. Every person older than fifty asked that same question: was he married, how many children did he have.

Dr. Snoke, a permanent bachelor himself, frowned disapprovingly. “What about that sweet thing that answered the phone?” he asked, waving a spotted hand.

Kylo felt his face color. “That is,” he began, “my... maid,” he heard himself say.

“How old? Is she taken already?” Dr. Snoke asked. When Kylo told him, the man gave a lecherous smile. “A decade’s difference is not so bad.”

Kylo shook his head. “It’s not, possible,” he said slowly. “I knew her since she was a child. She is still a child.”

“If she bleeds, she is ready,” Dr. Snoke said sagely, “for you.” He added quickly, “The girls in this county mature quicker, because they live shorter lives. And she is nearing marriageable age. Not that I suggest you tying the knot with a maid,” he added quickly.

Kylo grew uncomfortable at the look in Dr. Snoke’s eye. He shook his head, smiling diplomatically. “She‘s like a daughter to me,” Kylo Ren insisted, though once he said it he knew it was a lie. She _belonged_ to him, in a sense, but...

Dr. Snoke sighed and he reached his wrinkled hand over to rub Kylo’s shoulder.

On the drive back, Kylo reflected on Dr. Snoke’s words. The old man had a life full of accomplishment. The house that he lived in was bought by the wealth that he earned with his own two hands... but did he regret now living alone?

Rey was still a child, but she was beautiful.

When a maid got married, Mother would gift her with a decent severance before discharging her, because she would go live in her husband’s house. Kylo had never thought about what would happen if Rey were to get married. Even thinking about it now, hypothetically, sent a stab of distress into his head and made him grip tighter the steering wheel of the car. The thought of, most likely, one of those farming brutes bending the girl over a table and _thrusting into her made him_

He swerved into the road that lead to his home. Roughly he dispelled those thoughts. If she wished to live in his house, she would have no male visitors, he resolved.

The girl herself had put him in a sour mood lately. Her behavior was good enough; she took quickly to the punishment system. She hadn’t called him by the old name for more than a week. Only once did she let it slip. She tried discreetly to hide from him, feigned ignorance, and then finally after much cajoling she bent over his lap, so he could deliver two firm claps to her bottom. It had not happened again, to Kylo’s unexpected chagrin.

He wondered, sullenly, if he should increase the rate of beatings. Perhaps ten spankings to one ‘Benjamin’. He didn’t remember the rest of the initial dream, but he remembered awakening with a great sense of euphoria, of accomplishment, which was rare for his dreams. He didn’t feel that now.

He parked the car outside, walked briskly up the porch and let himself into the front door. The foyer was stripped bare of fine carpets, and the artwork that grandfather had so liked. It was spartan, but in a different way than Snoke’s. No matter. Kylo would start anew and place his own artwork when it suited him.

But where was the girl?

Kylo stopped himself from his usual habit of crying her name. He walked quietly towards the office with its red dial phone, and saw it empty. He set his doctor’s bag at his desk and wrote down in the logbook the time that he returned from Snoke’s. A slight floral breeze stirred the papers on his desk; the window was open. But where was the girl?

He moved soundlessly, though he was unsure why. He knew this house like the back of his hand, knew what floorboards would give him away. He went to the library and silently, cautiously opened the door to peer inside. Empty. He went to the kitchen, empty.

Where did she go? He went back inside his office; its carpeted floor absorbed his heavy footsteps. This was where he took phone calls, and kept the drugs and tools his professional activities required. Just then, he heard a slight humming. He turned his head towards the open window and saw a wide brimmed sun hat bobbing up and down outside. Slowly Kylo approached the window and looked down.

The girl was occupied with dead-heading the flowers that grew in the plant bed beneath the window. She had the gardener’s gloves on, and a pair of rusted clippers in her hand. The humming stopped as she had the sense she was being watched. She looked behind her, then pushed the hat up her head to look up.

The girl stared dead at him for a moment in silence.

He pushed aside the window screens and poked his head out. Self-consciously she stepped backwards, and tucked her hands and the clippers behind her back.

“Rey,” he said, “what are you doing?”

“Gardening,” she replied. “... But just a little bit.”

He rested his arms against the sill. He looked down at the planter’s bed. It stood two feet off the ground, the wooden frame covered in moss. The flowers returned each year, but they grew into an ungainly mass of stems and dead flower heads that lurched away from the house and bent towards the ground. The rest were weeds. He’d wanted the bed dismantled because of how ugly it looked, but he didn’t want to waste the money or the time. Rey seemed to have succeeded in cutting back the flowers and rooting out a mess of weeds. But, that was not her job.

“Look at the mess you’ve made in the yard,” he snapped, irritated.

“I’d have cleaned it up.”

“ _It wouldn’t have existed in the first place if you hadn’t dug it up_ ,” he said. “Even if you did, what if someone called?”

“It’s right there,” muttered Rey, looking down.

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I’d have _heard_ it; it’s right _there_ ,” she snapped petulantly, jutting her chin out to indicate his office and the phone inside the house, which he currently stood in, as if he were an idiot. She looked up at him, her eyes flashing.

“How would you answer it?” asked Kylo.

“It - I would run inside.”

Kylo felt his mouth twitching into a grin. A cocktail of emotions ran in his veins. “Let’s say I _cut_ myself and I’m bleeding out. I call the doctor. What could you do from out there?”

“I’d run inside and answer the phone and tell him to keep pressure on it,” answered Rey.

“ _No_. You would tell him that I’m out on call,” replied Kylo.

“Yeah.”

“You would give him an estimate of when I would return,” Kylo said.

“Assuming he can last until then,” she said, shrugging.

His grin froze on his face. He wasn’t sure what facial expression he should be making. “ _I don’t like the way you’re speaking to me_ ,” he said, sharply. Rey kicked at the weeds at her feet. Her black shoes, the ones he provided for her, were stained with a grey dusting of dirt. “Rey, I have _one_ overarching request when I’m out on call. Stay in the house, answer the phone, and report to me who called when I get back. You disobeyed that.”

“You never said the first part...”

“The first part is assumed.”

Her hands fell to her sides and closed into fists. She raised her chin defiantly, the sun hat scattering lights like stars across her face. “When you are _away_ , I must stay in the house to take your calls. When you get _back_ , I stay in the house, to do your housework,” she snapped. “I am always stuck in the house. I can go nowhere, Benj - _Kylo_!” Her brow twitched. She knew she had just slipped, but the question was if she thought she could slip it by him.

He gripped the wooden sill in both hands. He wanted to reach out and grab her, but that risked him falling out of the window. Red edged into the corners of his vision. Ungrateful _bitch_. If he ordered her back inside and she refused, she would win, the _ungrateful bitch_.

Just then, there was the sharp peal of a bell. She and Kylo flinched. The sound came from behind Kylo. The phone on his desk rang again, shrilly.

Every nerve in his body screamed to answer the phone. Instead, a new idea came to him. He put his head out the window and rested his elbows on the sill, looking at her. Outside, in the sunshine, Rey hopped in place, antsy. Her eyes darted to him.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked, smiling.

Rey grit her teeth. She turned and made a mad dash towards the back of the house. Kylo shook his head and sighed. He pushed himself away from the window and rubbed at his ears, how _loud_ was that _fucking_ phone. To keep his hands occupied, he combed his fingers through his hair. Outside he heard a gasp of breath and then the squeak of wood. He turned to see her red face through the threshold, hands on the window sill.

Kylo balked.

There was a rasping sound as she put one leg over the window, the stocking ripped generously along the thigh to reveal a patch of cream-colored skin. She straddled the ledge until in came the other leg, each planted on the carpet. Then she raced around Kylo to snatch up the phone.

“ _Hello!?_ ” she squawked breathlessly. Then, “This is Doctor Ren’s phone, _house visits only_ , how may we help you?”

Where was the hat? Kylo wondered, arms crossed across his chest.

“O-oh,” she said. “ _Rose_!” A smile fluttered on her lips. “It, it has been a _long time_. I’m doing fine, yes. Um, but now is _not_ a good time.” A pause. “Someday, yes. Thank you, but I really must go now... _Until next time_!” With shaking hands, she placed the phone delicately back onto the receiver.

She smoothed down her dress, then down her ruined stockings, pushing small twigs and dirt and dried leaves onto the carpet. She avoided his eyes, wordlessly retrieving a dust pan and a brush from the closet. She knelt before him to brush the dirt into the pan, then deposit it into his wastebasket.

Kylo slipped his hands into his pockets and appreciated the quiet, the unspoken obedience. He also liked to watch Rey on her knees beneath him.

“Rey,” he said, “where is the hat?”

“... It is outside,” she said evenly. “I will go find it.”

“I see,” he said. “And where are the gardening shears?”

“... Outside, also,” she muttered. The dead leaves broke apart beneath the brush and these stuck to the carpet.

“Remember to find those,” he said, “and return them to where you found them.” She looked up and he gave her an indulgent smile.


	3. Goodnight, goodnight!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't stay right now, but I'll have more time tomorrow and the weekend to make something on Ao3 :3

Outside the air changed. Clouds raced against the sky; a sharp wind blew. Kylo shut the windows to his office himself, and drew the curtains. Rey saw this and wordlessly followed suit. There would be a storm this evening. Kylo saw her swift action and was pleased.

In the days of his childhood, there was a live-in maid, a laundress, a cook, and a gardener. He was raised by a series of tutors and servants who acted as spies for his mother. A simple frog dissection landed him in Luke’s mountain retreat for one whole holiday. Rey was there, but she was just a _little_ brown-haired thing that got underfoot. She was both a messenger and a pet; he often found her hiding somewhere in his room to escape a beating or a bath or the loud sounds that occurred when Han and Mother appeared underneath the same roof.

Then came four years of college, four years of medical school, and one year of internship before the courts had seized most of his family’s assets and he was told he was destitute. He returned home.

No cook, no gardener; only a brown-haired girl who cried out and ran to embrace him once he stepped through the door. There was an old laundress; but when he informed them both that he couldn’t pay them, only _one_ stayed behind. Rey asked only that she could continue to live in his home, and in return she would work in all capacities.

Benjamin allowed it, but internally he was overjoyed. Rey was _familiar_ to him. Economically he could now spend time beginning his own practice, without wasting time and money on his house and his laundry. Biologically, he now had a pack of himself and one pretty female. Except he allowed certain transgressions, borne from over-familiarity. She was only a pup, yet to present, but the way she _cajoled_ him and _tested_ him at times went well beyond her stations. Again, Benjamin allowed it, allowed everything.

It was up to Kylo to course-correct this. It was another test, as a grown man and as an Alpha. To _kill_ Benjamin. 

So when Rey let slip the mention of _that_ name, he felt _relief_. At _last_ , another teaching moment. He remembered from his internship just how vital those moments were: diagnosing pneumonia in a timely manner, checking for the Argyll-Robertson pupil, listening to patients in delirium, things that hardened him against the sight and sounds of pain and death. 

He let Rey clean out his office and retrieve her sun hat, but before she could run upstairs, he called to her. Woodenly she walked into his office. The holes in her stockings, from straddling the window sill, gave him an inch-wide circle of cream-colored skin on the inside of her thigh. Her green eyes wandered from him, to the folder in his hands, which held her earlier _proposal_. Her eyes widened.

He beckoned for her to follow him. He lead her to the kitchen, which was large enough to form a staging area. He removed a cutting board and a stray bowl, and he set down the brown folder. Curious, the girl wandered too close to him, so he slipped his hands beneath her armpits and lifted her into the air. He set her down on the kitchen table like a doll, and she blinked and fixed him with a flustered look. 

“K... Kylo,” she said, “what is...?”

“You deserve a clear answer,” he said, grabbing the brown folder. “When you suggested using this house as my practice, I refused you, but I never told you _why_.”

Rey blinked owlishly, her brows furrowed. “You,” she said, “you, did... this is _your_ house...”

“This _is_ my house, but _you_ live in it, too. You deserved to have a say in the running of this house, and I’m incredibly impressed with the thought you gave this plan.” Her expression changed to one of shock and she looked down, her face reddening. He waved the folder in his hands before setting it down. “You deserve to know why it’s _not_ feasible.”

“Oh,” was all she said.

“When was the last time you saw a doctor?” he asked.

Her eyes widened. Kylo found his confidence wane. He remembered a long time ago that the little thing fell from a tree, and he held her in his arms as she cried and cried. After enough bandages and hugs were applied, she stood up and limped away. The present-day Rey shook her head slowly, her hands in her lap.

He recovered, _suppressed_ that spring of soft feeling. “You suggested the use of my office desk as an observation table,” he said. “That is _untenable_. That‘s where you and I do _paperwork_. This is the only other table in the house big enough for my work.” He spread his arms the length of the kitchen table. Then he dropped his hands to his sides. “This is also where you prepare our meals.”

Rey grimaced and lowered her head.

“Our food would be contaminated.” He kept an even smile on his face, as he asked, “Would you undress for me, Rey?”

She hesitated. She raised her delicate hands. The sleeves of the uniform slipped down. Her slender throat contracted as she swallowed. She used her hands to cup her exposed breasts. The rest of the uniform pooled around her waist, like the petals of a ruined flower.

The floral scent grew stronger, and again, some part of him wondered if that was what her bed smelled like. He could hear himself talking, which worried him because he did not know what he was saying. But he saw Rey bobbing her head and he was reassured. 

“That’s nice,” he said before rubbing beneath his nose. His body pulsed. He hadn’t had it _this_ bad since University, when the men would bring up whores or nursing students to their rooms. 

Mother had _bragged_ of his self-control to any debutante. She was his _Alpha_ in _medical school_ , despite the fact that in the years previous she berated him for choosing such a career path. _Doctoring_ did not make _money_ , and it demonstrated no opportunities for career advancement or leadership. Only _Betas_ became doctors. Sure enough, the few other Alphas at the medical school had dropped out after regressing to their baser instincts. They were unable to resist the scent of easy, vulnerable female flesh: in a cot; in a nursing uniform; or in one _infamous_ incident, on a dissection table.

 _I am different_ , he had assured himself. _I am more than my blood_. He swallowed the gathering saliva in his mouth. “Is there anything that troubles you?” he got out, before having to clamp his mouth shut again.

Her brow furrowed. There was hesitation, a sort of flicker of her eyes. Then she shook her head.

 _Lying_. Something sharp took form inside his head that gave him clarity of purpose. The girl was lying to him. Why? “What’s wrong?” he asked.

The girl hesitated.

In his mind Kylo thought of the secret threats the girl could be hiding. He had never observed her coughing, so he could rule out tuberculosis. Pellagra was once a common cause of death among the poor rural population, but now it was curable after the discovery of the Vitamin B complex. Her hands looked fine. Could she have been hiding syphilis from him? 

Tuberculosis and syphilis were feared by everyone. Tertiary syphilis filled the wards of insane asylums with victims now permanently incapacitated. It was called ‘general paresis of the insane’. 

He looked over the girl’s body, or what little he could see asides from her fine collarbone and the back of her hands. Then he grabbed her wrists and tugged them down, deaf to her cry of dismay. Her palms and arms were clear of rashes. Her small, pert breasts had no discoloration or discharge. Then he placed his hands beneath the skirts over her warm thighs, and he yanked down the stockings, with the intent to observe her genitals and her anus.

Small, _sharp_ fingers tangled in his. “BENJAMIN!” she cried.

The name dragged him to the present. He raised his head. “What —.”

His head snapped to the side. It took him a moment to understand what had happened, but his body knew. His ears rang from the impact. 

Rey had slapped him.

As she too realized this, she sucked in a horrified gasp. “B — Kylo, I’m so, _so_ sorry,” she murmured. Once her fingertips grazed his cheek, he stepped away. 

He reached down and straightened the collar of his shirt, then centered his belt buckle. He smoothed back his hair with both hands, careful not to touch his cheek. His fingers dragged across his scalp in smooth, sharp motions.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated weakly. 

“That’s alright,” was the automatic reply. Force of habit. The patient, the _customer,_ was always right. Except Rey was not a paying customer; she was his _pup_ and his _female_ , and she should not have hit him. 

A light flickered, from behind the short curtain over the kitchen window. 

He stepped towards her, and placed his hands on the kitchen table, to either side of her stockinged legs. “Have you ever had intercourse, Rey?” he asked.

An inch of space separated her heart-shaped lips from his. She drew a shuttered breath; color bloomed over the bridge of her nose. Her feet interlaced and tucked beneath the table. 

“Rey?” he prompted.

Her eyelashes fluttered. “N-no,” she breathed.

“No anal? Oral?”

Her face darkened at the words. “How...” she began.

Kylo realized he made a mistake. You didn’t ask a _proper lady_ these questions. But Rey wasn’t a proper lady; she was his pup and his female and his maid. She was his. Bemused, he decided to educate the girl. He leaned in to the shell of her ear, and he told her how _that_ occurred. Her flowery musk wafted into his mouth, and he drew it into his lungs as she gasped, scandalized. Her hands formed fists over her chest.

Kylo only learned of it, too, from University. The courses of study extended _beyond_ book learning and medicine. In the country, he supposed, things were done more _traditionally_.

“Why would anybody do that?” she wondered aloud.

“Because it feels good,” he said.

An exploding sound rocked the windows and the walls; the lights flickered. Rey cried out in fear and curled towards him. At once he reached out, and wrapped his arms around her slight frame. 

There wasn’t a sound, until at last the sky opened up. The first few raindrops gave way to a thundering _roar_ of rainfall. Astounding.

“Hopefully that will wash away the mess you made outside,” Kylo said. It was meant to be a joke, but Rey untucked her head from his neck, and looked at him with those grassy green eyes. His gaze flickered lower to her bare chest. Her nipples were bubblegum pink, and they glistened enticingly in his blurring vision.

There were so many books in the University library. The old _United States Pharmacopoeia_ had prescriptions for every possible illness conceived in that era, _neurasthenia_ being the most common — ‘weak nerves’, whatever the hell that was. Every respectable doctor of the day prescribed some form of prescription, which was usually (hopefully) a placebo of harmless vegetable extracts, if not opium. On the topic of medical quackery, Benjamin’s _other_ favorite reading was old research on blood presentation. What he remembered now made him chuckle.

“What is it,” she murmured.

He shook his head. One of the old _markers_ of Omega-presenting females, was _pink nipples_. Kylo always laughed at that assertion whenever he heard it or _saw_ it. A hundred years ago, some enterprising ‘doctor’, with about as much ‘qualifications’ as Han Solo, must have taken a sample of the population of women in a cathouse and drew his conclusions based on that. Despite his wildest hopes and dreams, and the rosy shade of her nipples, his girl was in all respects a Beta. The chances of anything but were slim to none; her _behavior_ betrayed nothing more.

These reassurances, he swallowed like an unexpectedly bitter pill. 

Beta or no, she _belonged_ to _him_. He reached a hand beneath her knees and one behind her shoulder, and lifted her up off of the kitchen table. Rey made a dismayed sound in her throat, but wrapped her arms around his neck, complacent. Kylo moved to the backdoor, to see that it was locked for the night, when her fingers gripped the fabric of his shirt. She pulled herself tighter to his body and buried her face against his chest, and in a low voice she muttered _please don’t put me out_. Her small hands on his clothes sent a _thrill_ down to the apex of his thighs; he squeezed his eyes shut, mastering himself.

Stiffly he removed himself from the door, and made the way towards the stairwell leading to the upper floors, their bedrooms. Her grip relaxed, slightly. “For your behavior today, you’ll get no dinner,” he said, answering the unspoken question.

Rey looked up at him, brows furrowed, but those eyes would not move him. Not tonight. With a pout, she rest her face against his shoulder and huffed a sigh, as he ascended the stairs. Well maybe he _was_ getting soft. “Something you wanna say to me?” he said.

In reply, the girl rolled her bare shoulders. Kylo entered her room and deposited her on her bed, where suddenly she remembered that she was indecent, and she crossed her arms over her chest, fuming red. 

Kylo placed his hands on his waist. Rey’s room, the servants quarters, had no windows. There was a second empty cot nearby where the washerwoman used to sleep, before she moved back in with her son. The _scent_ was overpoweringly the girl’s, but Kylo could easily control himself. This was his house, his domain. “How do you sleep in here?” he muttered. He looked down and saw a small insect scuttle beneath the opposite bed. “This place is disgusting.”

“ _You’re_ disgusting, Benjamin,” she muttered, petulantly.

He turned, and saw his maid threading her arms into the sleeves of her dress. “Excuse me?” he snapped.

She rolled over onto the bed, legs flailing for a moment like an upturned beetle. “Fine,” she sniffed. “I was looking forward to making a nice, tomato-y _lasagna_ for the _Master_ this evening, but I can appreciate a nice evening off.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Excuse _me_ ,” he said, walking to the foot of the bed. “I think I can make my own _lasagne_ just fine.”

“I would like to see you try,” she huffed. “Now is that all the _Master_ desires, or may I _retire_ for the _evening_?”

Rey knew he hated that word. It was the way the other servants addressed his parents, his uncle, and himself: _Master_ Solo. The girl only used it to _tease_ him when she was small: when she thought he was being _prickly_ or _bossy_ , or when she wanted to play an especially _intense_ game of tag. So she thought she was still playing with _Benjamin_ , the _boy_ she once knew.

“... Do you sleep with your shoes on, Rey?” he said, in a chastened tone. Sharply he added, “No wonder this place is a pigsty.” Again she rolled her shoulders without comment. He reached down and took her small foot in his hand, and unclasped the little buckle from around her ankle. The fabric of the stockings felt soft, pliable beneath his fingertips. Delicate. He set that one down, and did the same to the other; he dropped each shoe so that they hit the bare floor with an audible _thump_. He could always buy her more shoes.

Rey shifted uncomfortably, as he placed his hand against the ball of her foot. With his other hand, he cradled the heel.

“Is the _Master_ going to bake his _lasagne_ now?” she spat, brow furrowed. 

“I wish you would stop calling me that,” he said, flattening his palm into the arch of her foot.

“Oh, but I only said the _B-word_ what was it, three times?” she said. After a confused, flustered moment, she tugged her foot away from his hands. She flipped over onto her stomach, shaking her bottom, the skirts preserving from his eyes everything there was for him to enjoy one day. “ _Here_ ,” she croaked. 

The house creaked. Despite the insulation of this particular room, the walls and the ceiling hummed with the strength of the downpour outside this house. Kylo couldn’t remember the last time he had played tag with his pup. That was a lifetime ago: Benjamin’s lifetime. 

“ _What’re you waiting for_ ,” she demanded, her thighs shifting beneath the skirts.

Kylo walked to the side of the bed, and sat down beside her. The mattress groaned beneath his weight. “You’ll have to come over here,” he said, patting his thigh. _I won’t leave until you do_.

Rey huffed dramatically and pushed herself to a sitting decision. Without looking at his face, she crawled on hands and knees, before flopping down over his lap. The black and white skirts bunched and flaired dramatically behind her, like the plumage of an exotic bird.

He cleared his throat and Rey begrudgingly crawled higher, so that her bottom was poised for better handling. 

He hitched the skirts higher, up to her waist, and caught sight of the white underwear beneath. He placed his thumb on the lip and tugged these down mid-thigh, and the girl made a small sound. 

“Ten strokes,” he breathed. His body stiffened at the _sight_ of her. He fit his hand against the curve of her bottom. No discoloration, no raised bumps. 

“ _Ben-.”_

He clucked his tongue. “Ten. This is me being magnanimous. Count with me. Ready?”

Her shoulders hunched. The buns that held her hair stuck out like the ears of a small creature.

“One.” He waited, before raising his hand and delivering the blow. He couldn’t see her face but she flinched at the impact. “Rey, count with me, or we’ll keep returning to the beginning. _One_.”

“... _One_ ,” she repeated. _One_ stroke.

“Two,” he said. 

“... T-two.” The second stroke.

 _Good girl_ , he murmured. As they proceeded, he could feel his arousal pressed against her midriff. But he felt that the skirts hitched up her body should have concealed him.

On the seventh blow she stiffened, suddenly, before shifting her hips. “Rey?” he said, concerned. She made an uncomfortable sound. Kylo smoothed his hand reassuringly over her warm skin and she released a shuddering breath. Instantly the air smelled _sweeter_. Kylo swallowed the flood in his mouth, unnerved but not horrified. “Eight.”

The last few strokes went as smoothly as could be expected. With a sigh, he placed his thumb on the lip of her underwear, and tugged it snugly over her bottom. She twitched and reflexively tried to roll her body off his thighs, nearly rolling herself onto the floor until his hands caught her waist. 

“You’re _very_ determined to test me today,” Kylo remarked as he pulled his girl into his lap. His hand wrapped beneath her armpit to hold her in place.

At once he realized his mistake, when her bottom ground on his arousal. The girl’s face flushed bright crimson, her stockinged legs spread akimbo around his stiffening waist. That incredible fragrance drowned his senses. 

.

When next he could control himself, he was poised over the girl, her wrists pinned beneath his hands. 

The girl pleaded up at him, her face a mask of _fear_. 

Kylo felt saliva drip from his sharpened mouth, down to her collarbone; the neck of her dress had ripped down to the swell of her breast. She was beautiful to him; she had always been beautiful, even as a pup. He knew he deserved her; he had waited long enough

Instead he pushed himself off of his maid and stumbled out of the door, wholly against the _thing_ raging inside of him.

He was very _sick_ , he realized that now. He had been _sick_ for a long time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was looking for a good place to switch POV to poor maid-Rey, but I really wanted B-Kylo to get his 'morning after' where his fat, throbbing conscious weighs on him for one last time lol

Morning dawned.

He floated in a hot darkness. Despite the door that he had left open in the night, his body was embalmed between his clothing and his sweat. He raised his head and the room swam before his eyes. His tongue was a thick slab in his mouth. The clinical, rational portion of his mind had been shoved to the very back of his skull. He could feel the thickened head of his penis, pressing against the insides of his boxers.

The only thought he could muster, the vague diagnosis that he could give himself, focused on his teenage memory. It was summer, then as now. He and little Rey had been playing by the lakeside. Everything was fine until a certain musk entered his senses. Poor Benjamin recalled a feral-looking hag wandering around the shoreline; three days after, in the safety of his own home, he was frothing at the mouth and burning with the _need_ to find a _tight hole_ and _knot_ it. His very first, and worst, _heat_.

He blinked, slowly. He pressed his tongue against the insides of his mouth. How could this have happened? He had such great mastery over himself and his urges. The others were not so strong; he remembered, in the dorms, the short aggression from ‘fellow’ Alphas, who would seek him out just to throw fists. They were _jealous_ of his grades, jealous of _him_.

He hoped that Rey would find him. When she first proposed that they use their house as his practice, she had the temerity to offer herself as his nurse, in case he needed her. When he pointed out that she would need training, she said that he could teach her. Rey could give him a sponge bath, and tend to him as she tended the small birds that she finds. The look in her green eyes, it

At once, he sat up in the bed. _Rey_ , he cried. A nightmare fades, but the events from last night remained bright and burning in his fevered mind. He peeled his damp torso from the surface of his bed. The bedsheets were kicked off, his body splayed out like a frog on a dissection table. He took a sharp breath. His cock _stiffened_ painfully in his pants as her sweet scent filled his lungs. _I’m knotting air_ , he realized with horror. He was knotting the mere _dream_ of his maid, the girl who he had known as a child, after having nearly _assaulted_ her last night. 

“ _Rey!?_ ” he cried, stumbling to his bare feet. 

He stumbled out the open door. The servants’ room did not have windows, so when Kylo stepped out for the day, the brilliant noon sun seared into his retinas. He squeezed his eyes shut and cried her name again. Panic swelled inside his chest. Had she run away from him? Did he scare her with his sudden break with sanity? “Rey?” He rubbed the sand from his eyes.

Footsteps. Kylo looked down the stairwell and saw her _appear_ on the landing below. She appeared to glow; the sun caught on her hair in its three buns, and her rosy skin. Her green eyes flickered, likewise unsure of him. “Hullo?” she said, shakily. 

He grabbed the banister and lowered his first foot downwards. Rey wavered, but she planted herself there. Her green eyes met his. “I had made a call,” she declared, “to the hospital.”

Another step down.

She raised her chin. “They‘re sending a _Doctor Hux_ as soon as he‘s available.” The steps creaked beneath his weight. “Please - _please rest_ ,” she added, her hands linking over her white apron. 

_Are you afraid of me?_ His thoughts boomed so loudly in his skull that he feared she could hear them. _Or are you sorry for me?_ His teeth clacked together. It _disgusted_ him, to cling to the banister railing for dear life, where _she_ could see. 

“Would you like breakfast now? Or lunch,” she asked. Near the last steps he released the bannister and staggered down to the landing. The maid startled a few feet backwards before taking cover inside the his open study. She peered at him through the doorway. Kylo had his answer: she was _afraid_. 

“When -.” Saliva thickened his voice forcing him to swallow. “When is Doctor Hux going to be here?” He raised his hand and scratched the back of his scalp. Each word, each movement took conscious effort and time. Hadn’t he already asked when the Doctor would be here? “Did anybody call for me while I was...”

“No,” she said, placing her hand on the wooden doorframe. “They said to expect the visit sometime in the afternoon, perhaps late evening. The Nurse Phasma said ‘It _is_ the season’.” Embarrassment flushed her face pink, as did Kylo’s. They each looked away from the other. 

What a spectacle of a morning this was turning out to be! Of course, Rey lived and would live in a world of Betas; her idea of a ‘heat’ was her occasional secret _tryst_ with her pillow. Now Kylo’s own horrific inclinations were laid at her feet.

Once Kylo lumbered into his study, Rey scurried off and away from him to make something for him to eat. In the study, there were books of medicine that ranged from legitimate academic studies to quackery, books of politics and Alderaanian literature of his mother’s, and a handful of treasures from his grandfather that had escaped the creditors. Usually this library was a source of pride and entertainment, a way to wile away a slow evening in between calls. Now Kylo stared dully at them. These were bricks of paper. 

Kylo felt a touch of distress. How deeply had this heat _changed_ him? He had read accounts of how Alphas were once condemned to insane asylums, or castrated or had their glands removed in an effort to ‘cure’ them or return them to ‘normal’. He sat up from his chair. Resisting the urge to follow his girl’s scent, he wandered instead to his _office_. There, he could look over his patient files and his medical tools. No heavy reading. He could feel like _himself_ again.

The air inside the office was stuffy, and scented lightly with the stale disinfectant that cleaned his bag, so he unlatched the window and stuck his head out. Clouds scudded over a perfect blue sky. It was _beautiful_ outside, a gorgeous day. He rested his hands on the wooden sill and tasted that sweet, petrichor air. He looked down and saw that the stray weeds and dead flowers from Rey’s work had been washed away, leaving a loamy brown garden bed.

All was right with the world. Then the phone rang. Kylo clutched at the sides of his head and nearly _screamed_ at the piercing of his eardrums. _THE PHONE MUST DIE,_ snarled a voice in his head, _KILL THE PHONE_. Kylo yanked his head into the house, wincing in pain as the peal of the bell sliced through the air. 

Before he could grab the phone and hurl it into the wall, Rey darted into the office. Without a glance at him, she picked up the receiver. “Good afternoon! This is Doctor Kylo Ren’s practice; unfortunately the Doctor is _out_ at the moment, so if you could...” 

His brow furrowed. Immediately he walked behind Rey and grasped her shoulder. The girl flinched as if burned, then glanced up into his face, still holding the receiver to her ear.

“Finn,” she said. “I’m so sorry, but you _need_ to drive Poe to the hospital. I’m not sure when the Doctor will return-.”

Kylo reached over and grabbed the phone. “Doctor Ren speaking,” he answered, before clearing his throat. On the other line, Finn explained breathlessly as to how Poe Dameron broke his _other leg_ ; could he _please_ drive over and splint it. “Of course,” Kylo said, before coughing again. Saliva trickling down his throat. His girl stood next to him, sweet, _ripe_. When had she ever smelled so _sweetly_ , so _enticingly_? He returned the receiver to its holder, before placing his hands on his waist to keep from touching her.

“Rey,” he said. Rey crossed her arms over her chest and trained her eyes on her shoes. 

“You shouldn’t go,” she murmured.

He placed his finger beneath her chin and raised her head, so he could meet her eyes. “ _I_ make that decision,” he said sternly. “ _Not you._ ”

Rey opened and closed her mouth. Then she said, “But Finn is an Alpha.”

Kylo’s hand dropped. Then he itched to grab her again, but his hand closed into a fist. _How do you know that? “How do you know that,”_ he blurted out. _How do you know him?_

“Aren’t you two going to fight each other?” she asked, deaf to his unspoken anxieties. 

“Rey,” Kylo said, squeezing his eyes shut. “How - _how_ do you...” It didn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter; she was his _maid_ and he was the doctor. He pinched the bridge of his nose, seeking control of his emotions. “No, we wouldn’t fight each other,” he said. It was a _conditional_ truth. If things kept calm, he and Finn would muster a quick nod and each would be on his way. 

Rey looked at him dubiously, before giving a nod of her head. Kylo did not _need_ her assent, but it felt _right_ when they were on the same page. “Would you like some boiled eggs before you go?” she sighed. 

.

Should she have argued with him, and brought home the point? Once those eggs were delivered, she just watched the car leave the driveway by the front door, where her fears grabbed hold of her. She extricated her thin and worrying hands from her apron, no longer needing to hide. Though Rey had not been inside of a church in years, she caught herself staring vacantly at the wooded bend in the road where the car had disappeared, thinking, _Please let him come home to me_. _Please keep him safe, and don’t let him hurt Finn either._

The strength of this feeling wound up her breast and stole her breath away for a moment. It was a beautiful day; a breeze carrying the scent of last night’s rain swept over the treetops and beneath her skirts, and tousled loose strands of her hair. After a moment, she wandered back inside. 

Though her immediate desire was to return outside and _wait_ for him, Benjamin’s reproaches still echoed in her ears. Her steps shortened and her back straightened, as she felt the memory of his hand slide up her stockinged bottom. A _thrill_ flew up her lower back; _shamefaced_ , she resigned herself to the kitchen to clean up after breakfast. 

While Rey emptied the pot of water for eggs and washed her own plate and cup, she kept one ear out for the shriek of the telephone. Already, she had decided to tell the next callers to go to the hospital. What Ben had done last night was _abnormal_. The state that he had woken up in was _abnormal_. Poor Ben would work himself to the bone before he would acknowledge anything _wrong_ with himself. Maz Kanata used to make the same comment about Finn, so maybe _all_ _Alphas_ had that same inclination to _work_.

Rey remembered when Benjamin first began his practice. It had felt _silly_ to Rey; she had never even seen _one_ doctor for her whole entire life, and she turned out okay. Most people she knew who went for the doctor, did so because they were already near-death or they had some rare emergency. She could not imagine how some people could make a _living_ out of it. 

Most of all, Rey hadn’t believed in his conviction in making house-calls at every hour. The Benjamin that she remembered was shy and bookwormish, and to her it felt like the same Benjamin had returned from college. Then he began driving out in the dead of night, even during the winter. 

(She would wake up from sleep, heart surging with dread, _knowing_ that she had just missed the peal of the phone. After dark, he caught it before her; it was like a dog whistle to his ears alone. She would go downstairs in her nightclothes, and see him poised at the door in his heavy coat, anxiety heavy in her chest. He would look back at her and smile, with his shadowed but brightly lit eyes, and tell her to return to bed. ‘ _I will be back when you wake up_ ,’ he would say. And she would pretend to acquiesce, but she wouldn’t return to bed. _Couldn’t_.)

(Because what if he left and didn’t return, for _good_ this time? What if instead of four or eight years gone to school or to doctoring, he would not come home at all, no matter how long she waited? What if a policeman came and brought her the news that he was gone forever? What would a maid do then? What would she _do_ , and where would she _go_?) 

Now that he was sick with something himself, the _fear_ of it weighed on her _now_ , in the daytime. _Maybe I‘ll ask Doctor Hux to teach me how to help him_ , Rey thought, before at last setting down a squeaky-clean plate. There were new shots and pills and surgeries and therapies for Alphas now, and new treatments came out every day, if Rey were reading his medical journals correctly. A man named Sigmund Freud said that the Alpha Male’s condition was an overcompensation by the ‘id’ for having an overbearing mother, so maybe... Ben just needed to _talk_ to Missus Organa... Finn didn’t trust these things, but since Benjamin himself was a doctor, then he could get the best possible care.

But it did no good thinking and worrying about these things. She wrung her hands for want of something to do. What about his room? She could make his bed — _yes_ , she did so every day in the morning. Rey walked up the stairs and pushed the door open and —

( _it smells like you ._ )

It

It

Slowly, she felt her fingers squeeze around the handle, like a reminder that she existed. That she was a real, living _thing_. His room: larger than hers, and made larger by a French window that overlooked the garden in the back. Originally it was a guest room, but Benjamin claimed it for himself since he did not want his childhood room or the master bedroom, where his parents’ once slept together. A little sentimentality was lost: gone were his schoolboy books, toys, and journals, which Rey used to enjoy in secret while he was away. Now there was only a handsome, solid oak wardrobe and drawer where he kept his clothing. The only purpose of an adult bedroom was dressing and sleeping, _and_ _the things that men do when they are alone_ .

Her breath quickened. She was very lucky that Ben had not the ability to peer into her head, as he was wont to make her believe. She smoothed her hand over her chest, as she took in the _maelstrom_ of his bed. All coverings and a few pillows laid on the floor, and the fitted sheet that protected the mattress had folded and crimped at the center of the bed. 

Rey wondered what he had dreamed about. Slowly, her thoughts unspooled to last night. The way he _stripped_ her, and held her _wrists_ _down_ against the bed. _The way he_ looked _at her, the way his voice_ thickened _in his throat, and made his words lovely and terrible and potent to her ears-._ A heady warmth pooled in her center (the _precursor_ ), and nervously she pressed her thighs together. _No_ , but he had been _sick_ last night, she reminded herself. That sickness had spread to her in a way, too. She remembered being scared for her life in that moment; she had wondered if he was going to... _to ‘make her a woman’._

Rey felt her knees weaken, and the pressure between her legs only tightened _painfully_ now. A shuttered breath escaped her lips — she _needed_ _release_ , now. She looked at his bed, and... 

She was always so _careful_ to disguise her more shameful, _private moments_. As terrible as it made Rey, she was a little glad that Maz Kanata decided to quit the household and pursue her dream of running her own business. Rey now had her own room to herself, and she was sure that poor Ben had no idea what his maid did, alone at night. It pained her so, for Uncle Plutt had always called her mother a whore... But so long as Rey did it _alone_...

On hands and knees, she climbed onto his bed. The smell hit her all over again, washing over her in _waves_. A keening sound escaped her lips and then cut short, guiltily. Ben was like a _big brother_ or even a _father_ to her; this was _his_ scent, but it was never so _intense_ before. Never so _lovely_. There would never be words to describe it - or if there were, Rey did not know them, because she was never put into school for so long as he...

Rey planted her face square into the crumpled fitted sheet and breathed sharply. Her limbs grew heavy, and an _image_ or _sensation_ superimposed itself into her mind; that a long, heavy body sank the mattress behind her, and crawled over to her. That he breathed up her back as he draped himself over her, mounting her as naturally as a dog mounts a bitch in heat.

Her body convulsed pleasurably, and she felt wet heat against the surface of her panties. Normally _once_ would be enough, but she felt a bright disappointment; she thrusted her hips, trying to get more, because she was not done. But the shadowy, faceless mate that she conjured in her head was not enough, nowhere _near_ enough, because he was gone away. Rey grit her teeth, and she took her left hand and pawed clumsily up her black and white maid-skirts.

With only one hand to steady herself, she startled and swayed as her other hand stroked her cleft. Rey knew that she could make a discharge, but it was never this _much_... She would have to wash it today, before _he_ found it...

Her forehead slid against the fitted sheet; she was prostrating on her hand and knees. If Ben found her out... If Ben _found_ her, if _Ben_...

The _thing_ that mounted her nuzzled her shoulder with his strong nose, and cupped her small breasts with his hands. Her mouth opened and took in his scent. She could hear herself now, _chanting_ his name, _crying_ it out _loud_ for him to hear.

She did not know how long she _laid_ there, after. From far away, gravel crunched beneath the tires of a little car, and the engine popped and clattered to a stop. Rey blinked slowly, staring at the lovely midday light in the window. Then she remembered. She sat up. His room: bed now _more_ unmade then before, and now scented with her own hideous actions. Lunch: non-existent. Calls: who _knew_ how many missed? 

Rey slid off the bed and felt, to her horror, the product of her actions slipping and sliding in her undergarments. Haphazardly she straightened out her skirts and her collar and brushed off her apron, and then she fixed the buns in her hair, as the front door swung open below. 

“Coming!” she cried shakily as she walked out of his room. As she trotted _dangerously_ quick down the steps on new legs, she spewed out _great_ excuses for her tardiness and scheduled her next afternoon chores: “I was just busy dusting up the upstairs rooms and _completely_ lost track of time! Lunch will take an hour, if you don’t mind? If not, I can whip up something fast, and then I’ll...”

Her words faltered as she laid eyes on Benjamin. A purple bruise took up a large portion of the right side of his face. 

“ _What happened!?_ ” she gasped, horrified. “ _Did Finn do that!? Does it hurt_...”

His wide eyes, like pieces of coal, followed her face intently, until she stopped just in front of him. His nostrils flared slightly, but he said nothing. She raised her hand, to move his jaw so that she could look at that bruise. A _chill_ ran up her fingertips and ended beneath her neck, freezing her in place. This... _She couldn’t move away from him_. 

( _Alpha_ )

Rey swallowed. He tipped his head, before leaning in _close_. His hair tickled her cheek. She could feel his breath against tickling her exposed neck; her eyelids fluttered at the sensation. Her heartbeat pulsed so loudly in her breast, she wondered if _he_ could hear it. Nervously she pressed her thighs together, guilty. Surely, he wouldn’t be able to _know_... _would he?_ _What would happen, then?_

He moved to face her. Only a finger’s breadth separated their noses. His heavy brow arched, and for a moment, he looked... _lost_.

Rey let her hand drop to her side, and she looked down, embarrassed, head _spinning_. She muttered something about lunch, and wiping away at the corner of her mouth. The back of her hand came away wet. 

“You couldn’t be,” he muttered softly. “ _Little one_...” His mouth curled upwards in a _joyful_ way. A part of Rey melted at the sight; she had never seen him look so unguarded, so happy... A part of Rey _recoiled_ and cried out in fear; something was _wrong_.

She brushed past him and made her way to the kitchen. She needed to earn her keep. That was the deal: so long as she lived here, she would cook his meals and wash his clothes and answer his calls when he was away. Cleaning and dusting, and making the bed, too, it went without saying. All the things expected of a simple maid.


	5. hide and seek

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> henlo; sorry for slow updates, but i've been writing a lot and trying to figure out what should habben in this and other stories;;   
> what will give me, the catharsis;;

Since Ben returned, he climbed upstairs, back to bed. Rey didn’t have the courage to stop him. She hoped... _Maybe_ he wouldn’t smell it. Maybe he would be so tired, that he would just collapse onto his bed and fall asleep, without caring too much about the scents or the bedsheets. In the meantime, Rey crept around the lower floors, careful not to disturb his rest. When the phone rang, she nearly _jumped_ out of her skin.

With a frightened glance at the stairwell, Rey ran to the office and picked up the receiver herself. “ _Hello!?_ ” Then, “Doctor Ren’s office. My apologies, but—.” Her tongue twisted in her mouth; she glanced fretfully at the door behind her. He _told_ her not to interfere. But he wasn’t capable of seeing patients... But he distinctly _told_ her that that judgment wasn’t _hers_ to make; that _judgment_ _belonged to_ —.

 _Alpha._ “Um!” Rey swallowed wetly, shaking her head. Anxiety prickled along her neck. Out of pure shame, she untied her tongue. “... He can’t... he can’t see anybody, right now,” she chirped. 

“ _What? Well when will he be back?_ ” demanded the voice on the other line. Male. 

Rey kneaded the cord in her fingertips. “He’s, um, he’s, _p_ re- _preoccupied_...”

“ _Are you drunk!?_ ” he scoffed. “ _I don’t believe this!_ ”

“I’m not... I-I’m sorry...” She wiped her stinging eyes, and pressed her palm to her forehead. Normally she was okay with dealing with upset and distressed callers, but this voice brought her back to Plutt’s scoldings and Plutt’s beatings.

She would’ve been reduced to tears by the stream of abuse from the phone, if that _movement_ hadn't caught her eye. By instinct, she froze. She turned her head a fraction.

In the doorway, stood the long silhouette of a man. One dark, baleful eye, rimmed with red, pinned her where she stood. Now that he was spotted, he stepped inside the office. The air drained out of the room. 

Rey dipped her head. Trembling all over, she held up the receiver like a shield. How could she think that he was sick? He could pick her up and break her in half.

He stopped in front of her tribute. When he took the phone, Rey expected him to say: _Doctor Ren speaking. I’m sorry, my silly maid is confused. I’ll be there right away._ Instead, he brought the receiver to his ear, and after just a few seconds, he placed it down in its holder. 

Rey took one, then two steps away from him. Like many abused children, she felt that she had done something wrong, and that now she was going to be punished severely. Something worse than a handful of spankings. 

“Rey,” he said, his voice deeper than she had ever heard it before. “Come here, sweetheart.” He raised a hand to her.

“ _I’m sorry_ ,” Rey blurted out. Nervously, her fingers twisted the hem of her apron. 

Ben didn’t move, didn’t drop his hand. “ _What for?_ ” he murmured.

Apologizing never normally helped, until the day she met Benjamin. She never did learn why her mother left her, Plutt beat her for any reason, and the other servants used to hit her for speaking out of turn or being ‘lazy’. But not Ben. Was it worth a try now? 

“For saying that you’re sick,” she said faintly.

His brow furrowed. When he walked towards her, she moved along the wall of the office. The windows were open. If she were a child, she would’ve leaped out and ripped her stockings again, but Rey was a good girl. At least, she wanted to be a good girl for Ben. 

“I’m sorry for leaving the phone when you’re out on call,” she said. When he didn’t stop, she added, “I’m sorry for getting my clothes and my shoes dirty.”

Did he smile just now?

The way that he angled his body, forced her into the corner of the office. “What else,” he hummed, dragging one hand along the wall.

What else..? “Um...” Her back hit the corner. “I don’t know how to starch a shirt?”

Ben smiled so widely, that his eyes crinkled in the corners. He crouched down and swept her legs out from under her. Rey squeaked and flailed as he hefted her in his arms. There was a rumbling in his chest that thrummed in her ears. She didn’t know why, but it calmed her down, and her body went limp. Ben used to pick her up a lot, when she was small. Sometimes she used to play-pretend that Ben was her big brother... or her Daddy. It made collecting his socks and hiding under his bed really fun. Sometimes he would pretend, too.

“Sweet little thing,” he sighed.

.

They went inside his room upstairs, where Ben placed her in his closet. With a flourish, he yanked the sheets off his bed. She wondered if she should help him, but when she tried to leave the room, he _growled_ at her and backed her into the closet again.

It was dark, but nice and warm. The clothes in here smelled a _lot_ like Benjamin. Rey only wished that the floor was carpeted... she took the bedding and began spreading it out haphazardly over the hardwood beneath her. Pillows, towels, blankets, and more bedding materialized outside the doorway, which Rey used to cushion the floor. It wasn’t until he cleared his throat, that Rey glanced up and realized what she was doing.

In that moment, a cold, clear lucidity washed over Rey. All around her were blankets and bath towels that would most certainly need to be washed and folded, _again_. Her hands padded blindly against the cushions, then clutched at her face. What was she _doing_?

“What a pretty nest,” Ben murmured. He stepped inside, in his grey socks. “Do you want my coats?” Thick winter coats and scarves landed beside her. Rey gathered it in her arms and pressed the fabric to her face, before she could ask herself _why_. It felt like there was a second, silent brain that made these decisions for her.

The air displaced as Ben lowered himself beside her, his long legs sticking out beneath him. It was an awkward fit. He was a tall, long man. The closet was only _so_ long and wide that they could sit hip-to-hip and possibly lie down, but not much else. And not without a face-full of Ben’s coats brushing her face. But he didn’t seem to notice. 

“The baby would want to smell _you_ , not me,” he said conversationally.

 _... Baby?_ Rey hugged the coat tighter, caught off-guard. _What baby?_ Rey lowered her hand, and pat the hollow of her stomach. _What did he do?_ she wondered fretfully.

But Ben tugged at her elbow, and pulled her hand to his chest. “Our _pretend_ baby,” he explained patiently. “Our _practice_ baby.” He tapped her knuckles against his chest. “Alpha.” He reached over and brushed her cheek with the pad of his thumb. “ _Omega_.”

Rey felt the bottom of the world crumble away. _No, it cannot be_ , she thought. She waited for the sound of his laughter, but it didn’t come. 

Rey wanted to be a _nurse_. She wanted to go on calls with Doctor Ren, and then when she proved herself, she would go to one of those nursing schools for women. She saved up her biweekly wages and proposed his in-house practice, because she wanted to follow _his_ example. Omegas couldn’t be nurses; Omegas couldn’t be _anything_. Omegas lived in brothels or locked away in attics, or else they wandered around homeless, _screeching_ and dripping _slick_. 

_Shh, sh_. Ben grabbed her forearms and tried to pull her into his lap, but she wouldn’t have it. She shrugged him away, and pried off his searching hands. He had to be wrong. He just _had_ to be wrong...

He grabbed her wrist and squeezed gently. “ _Rey_ ,” he began.

“ _I’m not an Omega_ ,” she bit back. 

“You need a teacher,” he said, softer. 

“ _You’re wrong, Ben—.”_ Maybe all that schooling was too much for him. All those dusty, yellowed books did nothing at all for him but make him _cold_ and _clinical_. Rey was a _tomboy_ , and _tomboys_ don’t become Omegas. “Omegas play with baby dolls, and _I_ never did. Omegas _cry_ a lot, and...” Except she _did_ cry a lot. Her childhood was a blurry veil of tears, from Mother leaving her behind and then living with Plutt and being sent away. Maybe... they _made_ her like this? Her chin began to tremble.

As he spoke, he rubbed his thumb over her pulse point. Each of his words slammed a nail into the lid of her coffin. He explained that girls don’t _become_ Omegas because they play with dolls or like makeup and dresses. And he didn’t put much stock in Freud; an abusive childhood or a violent father figure doesn’t _make_ an Omega. So, Plutt didn’t _turn_ her into this _thing_. Ben _smiled_ at the mention of Freud, reaching out to stroke her cheek. 

Rey swallowed her nerves. “But how do you know?” she managed to ask. _How do you know what I am? How do you know that Freud is wrong, when he’s published studies and you’ve published nothing?_

His tongue roamed around his mouth, eyes turned glassy. “ _You’re making a nest_ ,” he said slowly, “ _for our baby_.”

Then she’d stop that, _right now_. She flattened her shoes on the floor and tried to get up. “ _Sit down_ ,” he ordered. He grabbed her hand and yanked her down sharply; with a _squeak_ , she landed on her bottom, her fall cushioned by so many pillows and blankets. He grabbed her ankle, deftly unclamping her shoe. When he tossed it aside, it hit the floor outside with a solid thump. 

Shame colored her cheeks. She spat, “ _You just_ want _me to be an Omega.”_ Her other shoe clunked against the wall, so now there were only her stockings. Ben sat himself in front of her, blocking out the light, but her body knew where he touched her. He smoothed his hand up the back of her calf, then up her thighs, rolling Rey onto her back. The hitched-up skirts prevented her from seeing what he was doing down there; his fingers tugged on the fabric of her stockings between her legs. Her breath stuttered. 

“ _Ben!”_ she cried. 

His grasp tightened. The stockings yielded like a second, _elastic_ skin, to be peeled off.

“ _Kylo,_ ” she pleaded... Because Benjamin was dead. The boy who hid her in his room and bandaged her scrapes and bruises — the boy whom she loved so _dearly_ — was dead and gone. 

“... You‘re so _good_ for me,” he said, dragging his fingers along the insides of her thighs. 

He couldn’t. He wouldn’t, she _wasn’t_ _ready_ —.

The fabric stretched taut, and _snapped_ between his fists. He let out a groan, and then shoved his face up her skirts like an eager dog. (An Omega’s scent glands are located on her throat, her armpits, and beside her genitals, she would remember later. They’re shaded pink in the diagrams in one of his anatomy books.)

When he raised his head, he emerged a _changed_ man. “M’not up... _set_ , with _holes_ in your stockings.” His words slurred together, and then he mashed his lips against her knee in what could either be an accident or a haphazard kiss. “M’not, _Mother_...”

Kylo slumped onto the pile of coats behind her. His hands circled her waist, preventing her from twisting away. She could feel him breathing in her hair. Her bottom ground on the hard thing between his legs; then her eyes widened as she realized what that was. 

He took a deep breath. “‘not so bad,” he said slowly, drunkenly. “We’ll get... _married_ , and we’ll have... _puppies_...”

“Puppies,” she repeated. Marriage... Why would he marry _her_? She was just a maid. Leia always tried to pair him with an heiress. Leia would be _seething_ mad, if she could hear the talk out of his mouth...

When Rey turned her head to look at him, he kissed her on the mouth. “Puppies,” he said. “Two of them.” He smoothed his palm over her thin stomach. 

Her mind reeled at the implication. She needed to think, so she turned her face away so that he would stop kissing her. Instead, he settled his mouth between her neck and shoulder. Rey Solo. “I could... _live,_ here?” she asked.

“Always.” With his mouth hot against her skin, the word was muffled. 

To Rey, who had never had a real home, this sounded too good to be true. Still, she wouldn’t go to nursing school, but she would have this nice house to live in. Ben... _Kylo_ wasn’t a drunkard, and he never raised a hand at her in anger. It _could_ be okay. It wouldn’t be okay _now_ , but in a few years, if she couldn’t scrape enough of her biweekly allowance to _escape_... 

_Oh, why did things have to turn out this way?_ she wondered, squeezing her hands into fists.

.

If time passed, she wasn’t aware of it. Kylo seemed content enough to just _hold_ her and snuffle against her neck. Sometimes, he would slot his knee between her legs when she grew restless.

“ _Don’t move_ ,” he croaked. “ _You’ll make it worse_.” Constantly, he _purred_ , and rubbed he his neck and jaw against her damp back. From somewhere downstairs, the phone rang. Rey froze. Kylo inhaled sharply, his head tucked down. Eventually, the ringing faded, and he relaxed. Rey let her head flop to the side.

.

“Hello!?” A man was downstairs now. Rey raised her head. “ _Doctor Ren_!? I was called down here earlier today.”

 _Who?_ Paranoia prickled up her back. She wasn’t expecting any visitors. Was Kylo expecting visitors..? She turned her head a fraction. He was poised above her, face pointed to the closet doorway. His skin glistened in the stray light from the bedroom; he was pricked, and alert as a hunting dog. 

A whimper escaped her lips. Kylo twitched, before setting a warm hand over her shoulder. 

“ _Hello_?” The man downstairs called. The floorboards creaked. “I was called here from the hospital,” he announced slowly. 

Rey gasped. That’s right: she called for help this morning. The man downstairs was _Doctor Hux_. “ _H_ —.”

A hand clamped over her mouth. _Sh, sh_ , Kylo dragged her deeper into the closet. The whites of his eyes glowed in his face. Rey tried to pry off his wrist — this was clearly a _terrible mistake_! Doctor Hux had come to make everything better; she just forgot the appointment. _Why couldn’t he just let go_!?

“ _Keep still_ ,” he choked. “ _Please, sweetheart. I can’t—._ ”

In her struggle, she hit the back of the closet. A _jolt_ ran through Kylo’s body. 

Doctor Hux hadn’t lived in this house for as long as Doctor Ren and his maid. Despite his caution, he didn’t know which steps announced his arrival to the jealous Alpha. You couldn’t blame him for what happened that night; really, it was probably the maid’s fault.

His hand fell away from her mouth. Rey gasped for air, elated — she thought perhaps that some _sense_ returned to poor Ben. She extended her neck, preparing to cry out for Doctor Hux, when teeth stabbed down into her exposed throat.

Stars exploded before her eyes. A cacophony of voices and noises fell upon her; the only thing she could call her own was the sound coming out of her mouth. This episode, which lasted seconds, dragged out for what felt like _hours_ and days to Rey’s mottled head. She would remember this bite forever, and anything previous would fade in comparison; her life began now, when the Alpha chose _her_. But more on that later.

 _Wet_ — beads of liquid rolled down her cold, stinging neck. For a moment, she was sure that Kylo had stabbed her in the throat with a hidden weapon, and that she was going to bleed to death. The panic was immediately smothered, _suppressed —_ it wasn’t that the idea was unreasonable, but that she could accept the idea that Benjamin had betrayed her. Then the feeling at her neck transformed to a warm, _rasping_ sensation; when she turned her head, she saw the oddest thing: Ben licked her _slowly_ , like how a mother cat cleans her kitten.

It felt like another game she played when she and Ben were children: Ben is my Brother, Ben is my Daddy, Ben is my Doctor. Ben is a Kitty Cat. Bemusement fluttered up inside of her. Cleaning was always _her_ job. How silly that Ben could be cleaning _her_...

“ _Doctor Ren?_ ” called a voice outside. 

Instantly, fear _spiked_ inside of her. If a minute ago she knew that the man outside was Doctor Hux, that knowledge didn’t matter now. A _male_ was in their house, and he was about to find their _nest_. Rey presses herself to the Alpha’s side, letting his arms circle around her.

“ _Here_ ,” Kylo hummed. Then, “ _Don’t come in_ ,” he ordered sharply.

“ _What in God’s name—,_ ” began Hux.

“Take one more step, and you won’t leave this house alive,” Kylo declared. A minute ago, she would have thought that he was joking, but an _image_ flickered before her eyes. A shudder wracked her body. 

“Are you threatening me?” Hux scoffed. “I drove all the way out here.”

“Send Phasma my apologies. I gave my maid a _scare_ this morning.” There was almost a smile in his voice. Almost. “Now drop the suppressants and get out.”


End file.
